As she crossed the hallway to her room, she heard a key in the lock.
‘Hi, Val!’ called Trish as she slammed the door behind her.
Val raised her eyebrows at her daughter. ‘And to what do I owe the pleasure of this visit?’
Trish’s lips tightened. ‘Oh, I’m sorry I didn’t make an appointment, Mother, but this is important.’
‘So’s my autonomy,’ Val began, then relented. ‘Actually, I’m not busy. What is it?’
Trish reached for the door of the sun-room, but Val stepped quickly to prevent her. ‘Notin there.’ She hesitated. ‘George—George is staying. Come into my study.’
‘George!’ Trish followed her into her artefact-filled study. ‘What’s he doing here?’ Then her eyes widened, and she broke into a broad grin. ‘Oh wow. Him too?’
‘Trish, what’s going on?’
Trish shrugged. ‘I don’t really know. I wanted to talk to you about it. And I brought this to show you.’ She opened the box in her hand and tossed its contents on to the carpet.
Val recoiled. ‘Uurghh!’
In death, the penis looked pathetic. Small, wrinkled, spineless, its tiny legs curled into its body, its circular mouth pouting at the end of its crushed head. Val felt a powerful urge to grind it into the carpet. She looked up sharply. ‘Where did you get it? It’s not. .. his, is it?’
‘No. It was in our back yard, a pack of them. I killed them, and kept this one for evidence. George has lost his, hasn’t he?’
Val nodded reluctantly. ‘Yes, he has.’
‘It must be happening all over.’ Trish put the penis back in its box, and flung herself into an armchair. ‘I need your intellect, Val. Isn’t it true that, biologically, males are damaged females?’
‘In a manner of speaking, yes, but—’
‘Look at what’s happening. Isn’t it possible that these things are, I don’t know, mutating, or being cast off? Maybe the female is finally fighting back, getting rid of this ... this growth, this cancer. What do you think?’
Val shook her head. ‘I don’t think there’s a female fighting to get out of George,’ she said. ‘Human biology is a bit more complex than that, Trish.’
‘I know it is,’ Trish snapped. ‘But something really important is happening, and just in case they’re about to turn into something even more revolting, I’m going to kill as many of these things as I can find.’
‘You can’t do that!’ Val exclaimed.
‘Why not? I’ve already made a good start.’
‘They’re human—’
‘They are not human, Mother. They’re vermin.’ Trish stood up. ‘Look, I respect what you do, and I didn’t come here to ask you to join the vigilantes or anything. But please, do what you do best. Think about it. Where did they come from, and when? What are they? And what are they up to now?’
She strode to the door. ‘Please, Val. We need to know.’ Then she was gone. ‘Trish!’ Val called, but then she heard the door slam. She scratched her head, intrigued despite herself. What a fascinating question; one that she had never thought to ask herself before. Where did the penis come from, and when? She moved to her terminal, already thinking about possible references.
Briefly, she remembered George, and hesitated. But he would probably sleep all day, and he knew his way around the flat. She slipped on her headset and jacked into the Net.
~ * ~
THIRTEEN
To the west of Ulan Bator the going got rough. For two days their convoy of army trucks and jeeps had been lurching along dirt tracks through a rolling landscape of scrub grass and patchy snow. The air was thin and cold, sharp against his raw throat. Pete sat on a bench in the open back of a truck, rifle upright between his knees, hands tucked into his armpits, and stared ahead towards the slowly approaching mountains.
Pete had come in search of adventure, but so far all he had found was boredom, discomfort and harsh discipline. It was damp. His clothes grew mouldy while he slept, and a lot of the food was mildewed. They were having trouble keeping the trucks on the road: moss grew on the points overnight, and the radiator tanks became thick green soups of algae. Yesterday they had fought through a blizzard, a fierce cross-wind bombarding them with tiny pellets of icy snow for almost six hours.
Today the sky was clear, a huge expanse of deep blue, bigger than the immense landscape beneath it. Between the two, their trucks crawled, exposed, like ants on a car bonnet, with nowhere to hide. The immensity of wilderness made him nervous, and his nerves made him aggressive. He was getting restless just sitting, when what he wanted to do was fight, and fuck.
He had been on a raiding party earlier that day. They had found a village and swooped on it with savage roars. But there had been no one there. No men to fight, no women to fuck, just a few animals which they had killed, a grain store, and signs of hasty departure. They had stormed around for a while, smashing up homes, and then met in the village square, at a loss for what else to do. Twenty wild men, the inhibitions of home stripped away within a few hours of arriving in this wild, empty land, and they could find no one to terrorize. So they set the village alight and jogged back to their trucks, carrying the plundered food.
Pete dozed, and awakened, shivering. It was almost dark, and suddenly they were surrounded by steep, wooded slopes. The track now headed steeply upwards and, if anything, was rougher than before. It had been his rifle falling to the floor that had awakened him. He bent to retrieve it, then breathed deeply, taking in the rich, resiny smell of the forest. The mountains. At last they had reached the mountains.
The drivers switched on their headlights, and the forest vanished into shadow. A strip of purpling sky was visible above, edged by the jagged teeth of mountain peaks. The wind funnelled down the valley, sweeping through him, making him feel more alive than ever before.
There was a shout up ahead, and their truck jolted to a halt. Pete leapt over the side and ran forward along the line of vehicles, his boots hitting the frozen ground hard. A jeep had overturned on a bend, spilling its load of food, weapons and men into the undergrowth. Shadows ebbed and flowed across the wreckage as men ran in front of the headlights of the convoy. Voices shouted, boots thudded, and amongst it all someone was wailing, a helpless sound of pain. As Pete approached, a single shot rang through the bedlam, and for a moment everything stopped.
Then an officer began shouting orders, and Pete joined a group of others in righting the jeep. Gloved hands grasped the frame, a heave and a yell, and the jeep was back on its wheels. Big men these, heavy-set and masculine. At last he was amongst equals, real men.
The jeep had broken an axle, so they shoved it off the track and distributed gear and men amongst the remaining eight vehicles. Then they lay their dead companion with his rifle by his side, and covered his body with rocks.
As they stood for a few moments, heads bowed, around the hasty grave, a timber wolf howled, ahead and to the left.
They drove on slowly, half the men walking alongside the labouring vehicles. The track had dwindled to little more than a dried stream bed, strewn with boulders. But now they knew they were nearing their destination. They could all feel it, a primeval presence up ahead, something very old stirring into wakefulness.
Deep in the mountains, the King Penis called. Stirring at last after His long quiescence, He began His journey to the surface. His call went out, gathering together His army. And those He called came to Him, a huge gathering of bears, wolves, wildcats and men, meeting to escort Him on His journey.
They made camp in a valley far from any roads, and waited. Thousands of men and beasts, singled out by their double-Y chromosome as the chosen ones. Driven by the masters that hung between their legs, the excess testosterone burning in their blood, they waited to serve God.
And God came.
~ * ~
FOURTEEN
‘If we consider the penis as a separate species, it gives a whole new perspective to the study of history,’ said Val. ‘Its relationship to other crea
tures is presumably symbiotic. A parasite unable, until recently, to survive on its own, it must have given something to its host in exchange.’
‘Testosterone,’ said George sadly. He was huddled deep in an armchair, wrapped in a blanket, and staring out of the window of Val ‘ s sun-room. ‘Extra physical strength,’ he added, ‘sexual pleasure. Oh, where has it gone?’
‘You don’t need a penis for sexual pleasure,’ Trish snapped. She paced the room restlessly, trying to contain her impatience with her mother’s measured thought processes.
‘That’s true,’ Val agreed with her. ‘So what did the penis give back in exchange for its sustenance? What’s so special about being male?’
‘It’s better than being a eunuch.’
‘But is it better than being female? There must be some evolutionary advantage.’
George looked round from the window. ‘Reproduction?’ he suggested drily.
Trish snarled. ‘Fucking cocksure!’ she exclaimed. ‘It’s your pheromones fucked everything up. You’ve blocked female energies! Without that worm between your legs, women could reproduce quite happily on our own. And if we kill them, it’ll happen again.’
She and George glared at one another. Then he looked away.
‘I wonder.’ Val was frowning, trying to figure it out. ‘Where do you get that idea from, Trish?’
‘I know it. Men are mutants, parasites, they have no useful role. It makes no sense for them to exist.’
‘Maybe,’ said Val. ‘I wonder how long the penis has been around? We’ve always assumed two sexes to be the natural state, but modem biology sees the female as the basic sex and the male as almost a damaged female. What is the purpose of being male? When you boil it down, nobody really knows.’
‘What’s the purpose of life?’ said George.
‘True, but life could go on quite happily with hardly any males at all. Why do we breed so many? All they do is fight and eat precious food supplies.’
Trish laughed. ‘Go for it, Mother. You’re getting almost radical in your old age. But don’t forget the murders. Why do males kill females? Why do men hate us so much? At all times, in all places, men have tried to destroy women. They hate us. They hate everything living. Only a mutant could hate life so much.’
Val nodded, still wrapped in her own thoughts. ‘Is the basic assumption true? Have males been around since life began, or did they emerge far more recently? Do we know there were male dinosaurs, or is it just assumed?’
George was staring out of the window again. ‘Where have you gone?’ he wailed. ‘What did you want that I didn’t give you? We had a decent sex life, I kept you clean and warm. Where are you?’
‘Think, George, think!’ Val exclaimed. ‘About three and a half thousand years BC there was a change. Across the world, the male sky gods began to usurp the Earth Mother. Conventional wisdom has it that men suddenly realized their role in reproduction and seized the power that knowledge gave them. But why did it happen universally, in cultures having no contact with one another? Unless biology changed at that time. What if there were no males before then, or not enough to upset women’s natural functions. What if women really did conceive by parthenogenesis?’
‘You mean Jesus really might have been a virgin birth?’
‘No,’ she said impatiently, ‘not him, nor Montezuma, nor Plato, nor any of the others who claimed it. Only girl children are born that way. Perhaps female is the natural state, and your parasitic penis has distorted your biology.’
‘So are you saying that now I’ve lost my penis, I’m going to become a woman?’
Trish laughed scornfully and Val’s eyes suddenly filled with pity for the frail husk of the man she had once loved. ‘Oh, my dear, I doubt it,’ she said. ‘There’s so much more to being a woman than not having a penis.’
The two women looked at one another as George began to cry quietly. Trish grinned. ‘Thanks for the theory, Val,’ she said. ‘Now will you join me on a field trip?’
Val shook her head. ‘No. I can’t hate the way you do. I know the theory of women’s oppression, and I know you’re right, but I can’t kill. I think that killing is wrong.’
Trish tightened her mouth, and suddenly Val could see how she had been shaped by the struggle of more than ten years as an outsider in a society that hated her simply for what she was. And Val knew that she had no right to judge her daughter’s choice.
‘All my life I’ve been told that women mustn’t be violent,’ Trish said. ‘But there’s too much hatred, too much injustice. We have to balance things up before we can live in peace. So, yes, I’m going out to kill. It’s time for women to kill.’
~ * ~
FIFTEEN
‘There, look!’ Carole pointed across the field to their left. Undulating across the new green shoots of wheat was the now familiar sight of a pack of penises in full flight.
Sanjula stopped the minibus and the six women piled out. Armed with baseball bats, axes, and an industrial paint-stripper, they fanned out across the field. The penises were running hard, but they looked tired, their tiny legs making heavy going of the wet, clay soil. As the women closed in, they squeaked warnings and tried to scatter, but the women were merciless. Bats and axes rose and fell, and the green of the wheat turned red.
The penises twisted and dodged, trying to evade the sharp blades, the heavy bats. But the women were experienced now. Carole chopped five times in rapid succession, slicing away chunks of flesh to expose quivering internal organs, until the creature lay still. Then she looked around and closed in on her next victim, chopping fast and sure. Kill one, go for the next.
Janet swung her bat furiously. ‘That’s for my mother, my mother, my mother! That’s for my mother, my mother. And this one’s for me!’
Some of the penises were tiny, belonging to small field mammals, and they escaped the first onslaught. But Trish circled around the fray with her paint-stripper, gas-tank strapped to her back, and charred the ground with its fierce blue flame. Escaping penises withered and blackened, writhing briefly as the flame licked over them. Soon, nothing moved except the six women and a few wisps of smoke. The smell of blood and burned flesh was strong.
‘All men must die!’ Trish cried, punching her fist in the air.
‘Death to all men!’ shouted the others. They dropped their weapons and hugged one another, laughing and crying.
Carole took Trish’s arm. ‘We’re doing well,’ she said.
Trish shook her head. ‘We’ve hardly begun. How many have we killed? A few thousand? There are over thirty million men in this country, and what about all the horses, dogs, cats and foxes?’
‘You can’t kill them all single-handed.’
Trish looked fierce and determined. ‘That’s why we have to find out where they’re going.’
Back at the minibus, they spread out the map, and located their position.
‘They were going that way,’ said Sanjula. She drew a line on the map. They all looked at where this and half a dozen other lines converged. Trish jabbed the map with her finger.
‘Definitely,’ she said. ‘Heathrow. But where after that?’
~ * ~
SIXTEEN
The convoy that made its slow way down out of the mountains was a lordly sight. The King Penis’s acolytes had built a huge platform on which to transport Him, and here He lay, open to the view of His worshippers for the first time in millennia. Fifteen metres long He was, and five metres high. His immense glans turned constantly from side to side, His eyes seeing everything. His skin was a dull grey-white, hanging in loose folds. Many smaller penises dwelt in these crevices, eating the lice which crawled upon His skin, cleaning and oiling Him with their secretions. His flesh quivered and undulated, caressed by the cold Mongolian wind, and sensual shivers ran constantly along His length.
Slowly, this aweful God was borne in mighty procession along the unmade roads towards the steppes, guarded by His army of rampant male creatures. They ravished the countryside a
s they went, leaving behind them a slime trail of destruction and stinking death.
At last, Pete knew joy. His past life faded from his memory. He had always been here, basking in the pheromones of God, taking his turn carrying the platform, scouting ahead, hunting. He could do anything he wanted. He was the Chosen of God.
After a day and a half, they came back to the edge of the grasslands. From his carrying position at the front of the platform, Pete saw three aircraft drawn up waiting for them, a transport plane for the King Penis Himself, and two troop-carriers for His bodyguards. Through the agency of his own huge cock, Pete felt the brotherhood of those who waited, the pilots, crew, and technical staff who now ran towards them, stopped, and prostrated themselves before the God of Masculinity.
The planes had brought television equipment and recorders for the Net. The King Penis turned His huge glans, searching. His gaze fell on Pete. ‘YOU.’ A bass voice rumbled through Pete’s bones. ‘YOU.’
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